PA. CBS Affiliate Brings Back News

[DToTheJ]

Remember a few years ago when the Scranton, PA CBS affiliate WYOU scrapped their daily newscasts, citing the economy? Well, recently, the station has "started from scratch" and launched a brand new newscast.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/bl...ad_WYOU_News_Whistling_Past_the_Graveyard.php

 

[KML0224]

Good luck going up against the buzz saw which is WNEP-TV (ABC) channel 16 of Scranton! :O

 

[Wright County Guy]

Nice to see this, in the era of one station running multiple newsrooms.

 

[crainbebo]

How 'bout if WTVH in Syracuse brings back news? They WERE #1 in Syracuse and #2 in Utica 20 years ago, but WSTM 3 destroyed it in the early '00s.

-crainbebo

 

[fybush]

WTVH never stopped doing news. "CBS 5" still does news at all the usual times; it's just done as part of the "CNY Central" clustered operation alongside WSTM and WSTQ.

 

[crainbebo]

Well yes, thank you for clarifying that. However, WSTM still produces WTVH's weeknight newscasts, and reporters are all from 3 and not from 5. Like I said, WSTM's JSA with WTVH has lost a lot of viewers on CBS 5.

-crainbebo

 

[DToTheJ]

What about the other major station in the market, WSYR (nee WIXT)? I believe there's a reverse situation in effect in that WSYR actually runs the news operations for sister station WIVT (nee WMGC) in nearby Binghamton...

 

[Bob1370]

If you want local news at WTVH it'll need new ownership. WTVH's current owner, Granite, was bankrupt back in 2006-07 and it's still a shrunken company which had to sell several of its best stations including now-NBC O&O KNTV in the San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose market. They farmed out their news in Syracuse to Channel 3, a stunning conclusion to a long decline.

 

[fybush]

What about the other major station in the market, WSYR (nee WIXT)? I believe there's a reverse situation in effect in that WSYR actually runs the news operations for sister station WIVT (nee WMGC) in nearby Binghamton...

There's a local newsroom at WIVT, albeit a very small one. The last time I checked, WIVT does its own daily newscast locally - just a half-hour that runs at 6 PM and is repeated at 11, simulcast both times on 34.1 (ABC) and 34.2 (NBC). The only piece that comes from Syracuse is the weather; everything else is Binghamton-based. Over the years, WIVT has tried some other experiments, including simulcasting news from WETM in Elmira and on occasion from WIXT/WSYR-TV. I think at one point there were anchors in Elmira doing a Binghamton newscast for WIVT, too. But it's a long 50 miles west to Elmira and an even longer 60 miles north to Syracuse, and Binghamton viewers just don't care what's happening in either of those places, as it turns out. (WSYR newscasts are simulcast up in Watertown on WWTI, where nobody much seems to care about them either. I believe there was an attempt a few years back to do a regional morning show out of WIXT/WSYR that was seen on WWTI, WIVT and also WUTR in Utica when it was co-owned. People in those towns kept watching WWNY, WBNG and WKTV.)

Oh, and from the nitpickers' brigade - "nee" is French for "born," and so technically, WSYR-TV is "nee WNYS" and WIVT is "nee WBJA." It would be more technically correct to say "formerly WIXT" and "formerly WMGC."

 

[fybush]

Well yes, thank you for clarifying that. However, WSTM still produces WTVH's weeknight newscasts, and reporters are all from 3 and not from 5.

Like it or not, times have changed. While everyone's in the old WSTM building and most of the veteran staffers came from the WSTM side, the way they look at it now is that everyone in the building is "CNY Central," producing newscasts for both WSTM and WTVH (and WSTQ at 10, too.) Ask any of the newer staffers there - and there's been a lot of turnover - and they won't tell you "I work for channel 3 and produce a newscast for channel 5." It's one newsroom, one field staff, one weather team, two stations, two producers, two studios, two control rooms, two anchor teams, and it's probably more indicative of the future of TV news than the old single-station, single-newsroom approach.